Dragons, Dwarves, and Cubes: the Effect of Player Agency in Games and Game Communities
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Dragons, Dwarves, and Cubes: The Effect of Player Agency in Games and Game Communities Brian W. McKitrick The kind of player agency within a video game, authentic or valid, determines the way in which a player community forms around that game. The player community, in turn, through mods and other creative content based on or made in the game, then alters or redefines the form of player agency for that game. Player agency is the combination of different elements of a game’s design that give players control over certain aspects of their gameplay experience. The systems that define the agency for a game are not the same across all games, but all games do allow the player some form of agency. What is critical to understand, and what I will be discussing in this paper, is that the agency a player has in a game directly impacts the communities that form around that game. In other words, the ways in which people play a game gives shape to the player communities that celebrate that game. In addition to providing the foundation for a player community, the agency within a game can be further altered by mods, which leads to a complex relationship between the player agency in a game and the modding community for that game. In order to explain this relationship between player agency and player communities, I will first provide a definition for player agency, which I will then demonstrate by applying that definition to different games and their player communities. My definition is largely based upon the work of Adam L. Brackin, Ph.D., using his ideas on how player agency can be viewed as a spectrum between authenticity and validity. The video game examples I will provide will start at one end of the spectrum and work towards the other, beginning with the most authentic and moving towards the valid. For each of the games there will be discussion on how the player agency in the game affects the kinds of player communities that have formed around them. The Phoenix Papers, Vol. 2, No. 2 P a g e | 185 Player Agency, Validity, and Authenticity Before I get into specific examples of player agency, defining what that actually means would help us to have a better understanding of what I mean. For the purposes of this chapter, player agency is the degree to which a game allows the player to create a unique experience for themselves while playing the game. Games with a great deal of player agency will have some sort of system in place that makes sure that no one will have the same experience playing it. Most games do not have this level of agency, mainly because it is difficult to handle without making compromises in other areas of the game. The ways a game can create a level of agency can be through validity or authenticity. This model of analyzing games, developed by Adam Brackin, measures games by the degree to which they present a valid or authentic gameplay experience. It is “a spectrum between gameplay with high validity which feels right for the game one is playing, and authenticity which models reality as a simulation or serious game might” (Brackin, 2012). Validity can be seen as the degree to which the interactivity is prioritized in a game’s narrative. Games that feature a story that give the player meaningful choices and encourages them to have an emotional investment in the game can be said to be highly valid. The characters, their journey, the world they live in: all these narrative elements can heighten the emotional investment the player may want to put into a game. Their experience in the game makes them care for the path the story takes. The narrative method of creating a valid gameplay experience can be seen in games that have a branching story, letting the player see what effect their actions have on the world of the game. However, this method of depending on the narrative to engage the player in making choices only works well when the game capitalizes on strong writing. Games that promise the depth to which the player can affect the outcome of a story, then turn around and force the player into only one storyline regardless of their choices, do not provide a valid gameplay experience at all. Here, the player agency is their measure of control over what actions they can take, and how well the game can present believable reactions in the narrative to those actions. In this context, validity through narrative is the degree to which the player can interact with the game’s story. Games like Mass Effect and Star Wars: The Old Republic allow for the player to progress through the The Phoenix Papers, Vol. 2, No. 2 P a g e | 186 story through branching dialogue choices, making the player have an impact on what line they take throughout the game.1 Not all games can create validity through their narrative and story elements, since, of course, not every game has a story written out from the very beginning. Games can also create validity through their game mechanics, where the gameplay itself conveys a great deal of meaning. Games that have mechanics in place that allow the player to determine the path through the game world by making gameplay decisions, not narrative choices, can be said to have a high degree of validity through mechanics. In these games, the narrative can sometimes be implied rather than directly stated, sometimes letting the player determine the actual structure of their story, instead of having to choose between option A and option B in a dialogue tree. Valid player agency can then be defined, in such instances at least, as the depth to which player actions and gameplay affect the world of the game. Games that make it so that every action the player takes has an effect on the world of the game, while very rare, are highly valid. This is not very realistic, however, but validity is the measure of how standardized or normalized the gameplay experience is, not how realistic it may be. Games like Spore, where the player guides an alien species through every level of evolution, offer a highly valid experience through its mechanics. It allows the player to become deeply involved in what they do inside the game world and makes it so that the player has an impact on it as well. With the definition of validity out of the way, we shall move on to describing authenticity. Authenticity is “a simulation which is realistic or believable at the expense of aesthetic concerns” (Brackin, 2012). Authentic games are more likely to allow the player greater interactivity within the game world, giving them a role closer to author than audience. Instead of crafting an epic story the player is then shown, an authentic game gives the player the tools to make their own story. Because of this, the story of an authentic game might not always be as epic and engaging as that of a valid game. However, by definition, an authentic game is one which is willing to forgo narrative complexity in exchange for realism in its simulation. Guild Wars 2 is an example of an 1. It can be argued that the Mass Effect series has some problems concerning the promised effect of choices and the actual effects choices have in the game. This is beyond the scope of this paper, but is important to consider when examining valid agency in games. The Phoenix Papers, Vol. 2, No. 2 P a g e | 187 authentic game. Players are rewarded just as much for exploration as they are for defeating enemies, encouraging them to see as much of the world as they can, in a sense, crafting their character’s story along the way. But what about authenticity through means apart from world building and personal narrative tools? This kind of game, one that builds an authentic play experience primarily through game mechanics, is much, much rarer. What it is, in essence, is a game that gives the player not the tools to create a narrative, but the tools to create a world. Games that give the player the ultimate freedom of creation with no set goals are highly authentic. They put the player in a world that can be almost a blank slate and let the player decide what goals they wish to pursue. These games oftentimes do not have much in the way of an ending or ‘win’ condition, leaving the player to decide when they are done. Open ended games like Minecraft and Terraria give the player a procedurally generated world to play with, giving them the agency to create projects of their own design. “Losing is Fun!” – Dwarf Fortress With the definition of player agency out of the way, we shall start at the authentic side of the spectrum with the first example: Dwarf Fortress. First released in 2006, with development having started in 2002, Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress is an as of yet unfinished freeware game developed by one man (Tyson, 2008). The game’s primary game mode, Fortress Mode, puts the player in charge of seven dwarves and is only tasked with building a mountain home in a procedurally generated world with incredibly accurate modeled geological forces. The degree to which the game tracks and simulates entities is in direct contrast to its equally simplistic graphics, as it uses ASCII to depict everything in the game. The second game mode, Adventurer Mode, allows the player to create a hero in the generated world, allowing them to explore the land, full of monsters, demons, bandits, ruins, human castles, elven forests, dwarven cities, abandoned dwarven cities, and not-so-abandoned goblin towers.